


Wizards' Chess

by LyraNgalia



Series: Murder on the Hogwarts Express [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Harry Potter AU, Marauders' Era, Potterlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 10:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The power plays that simmered within Slytherin every year were things that rarely left the house's dungeon dormitory, games of cunning and dominance played by the most ambitious house within Hogwarts. Usually powers rose and ruled Slytherin's dungeons with an iron fist. But that was before three extraordinary wizards and witch came to occupy the Slytherin dungeon at the same time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wizards' Chess

To the rest of Hogwarts, Slytherin was the house no one spoke of except to whisper rumours of which family practiced the Dark Arts beneath a veneer of respectability, the house whom others avoided in the halls and yet wondered just _what_ happened in that dungeon common room. Within, however, Slytherin was a house filled with intrigue, filled with strange bedfellows bound by common ambition and power plays whose whispers never left the walls of the common room.  
  
Most years, an elite would arise, a cabal of the most ambitious, most cunning students who would then dole out favour and influence to the rest. Some years, those cabals included prefects. Other years, the prefects lived on the sufferance of the cabal.  
  
Every so often, a year would arise where there would be two such groups, each headed by some strong willed mind, neither gathering enough followers to itself to establish a grip over the entire house. Those years were rare, and destructive, as both groups sought to gain power, to subsume the other within the confines of the Slytherin dungeons. These were years where first years quivered uncertain in their robes, where they dashed to and from class and sought refuge in other places rather than the silent, civil battleground of the common room.  
  
This year, there were three such minds in the Slytherin common room, yet the war that was waged was so subtle that even the other Slytherins were hard pressed to realize it was happening at all.  
  
There were spheres of influence, of course, Even the slowest Slytherin felt those. A bubble of power gathered around one James Moriarty, Seventh Year Head Boy. Whispers of secrets and scandal that involved even Ravenclaw in its ivory tower clung to Irene Adler, sixth year, like perfume.  
  
But neither emerged to hold undisputed court over the Slytherin dormitories, though other ambitious Slytherins found their own attempts ruthlessly cut down. By Christmas holiday, a cautious peace had settled over the dungeons, as Quidditch and exams and attempts to race ahead of the other three Houses swept through Hogwarts.  
  
But beneath the flurry of activity, of studying and exams and games of Exploding Snap and the latest product from Zonko's and Honeydukes', the game lurked, a game of influence and misbehavior, a game whose only hints were a vial of mislaid potion here, an imperfectly uttered charm there, and an oft-ignored sixth year who lurked in the shadows named Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
